Joshua — Complete eBook

“Yet you desire a more distinguished son-in-law?”
interrupted his companion. “How is our
arduous enterprise to prosper, if those who are to
peril their lives for its success consider the first
sacrifice too great? You say that your daughter
favors Hosea?”

“Yes, she did care for him,” the soldier
answered; “yes, he was her heart’s desire.
But I compelled her to obey me, and now that she is
a widow, am I to give her to the man whom—­the
gods alone know with how much difficulty—­I
forced her to resign? When was such an act heard
of in Egypt?”

“Ever since the men and women who dwell by the
Nile have submitted, for the sake of a great cause,
to demands opposed to their wishes,” replied
the priest.

“Consider all this, and remember that Hosea’s
ancestress—­he boasted of it in your own
presence—­was an Egyptian, the daughter of
a man of my own class.”

“How many generations have passed to the tomb
since?”

“No matter! It brings us into closer relations
with him. That must suffice. Farewell until
this evening. Meanwhile, will you extend your
hospitality to Hosea’s nephew and commend him
to your fair daughter’s nursing; he seems in
sore need of care.”

CHAPTER IV.

The house of Hornecht, like nearly every other dwelling
in the city, was the scene of the deepest mourning.
The men had shaved their hair, and the women had put
dust on their foreheads. The archer’s wife
had died long before, but his daughter and her women
received him with waving veils and loud lamentations;
for the astrologer, his brother-in-law, had lost both
his first-born son and his grandson, and the plague
had snatched its victims from the homes of many a
friend.

But the senseless youth soon demanded all the care
the women could bestow, and after bathing him and
binding a healing ointment on the dangerous wound
in his head, strong wine and food were placed before
him, after which, refreshed and strengthened, he obeyed
the summons of the daughter of his host.

The dust-covered, worn-out fellow was transformed
into a handsome youth. His perfumed hair fell
in long curling locks from beneath the fresh white
bandage, and gold-bordered Egyptian robes from the
wardrobe of Kasana’s dead husband covered his
pliant bronzed limbs. He seemed pleased with the
finery of his garments, which exhaled a subtle odor
of spikenard new to his senses; for the eyes in his
handsome face sparkled brilliantly.

It was many a day since the captain’s daughter,
herself a woman of unusual beauty and charm, had seen
a handsomer youth. Within the year she had married
a man she did not love Kasana had returned a widow
to her father’s house, which lacked a mistress,
and the great wealth bequeathed to her, at her husband’s
death, made it possible for her to bring into the
soldier’s unpretending home the luxury and ease
which to her had now become a second nature.